I have really enjoyed felting the clothes for my last few projects, so I was inspired to combine this new-found love of felt clothes with my felted dogs. So for no real reason other than that, I decided to make a dog wearing a vest and bow tie. And what better dog to wear a bow tie than a dachshund? I added the round wire glasses to complete his nerdy look.

Here is my shepherd! He is equipped with a walking stick that just rests in one of his hands. As for the flock, there is only one little lamb, but I may make a few more when I have a chance. This one has a little bell around his neck. Finally, the horse is in the stable. He has a brown wool blanket draped over his back so he doesn’t cold.

Both angels have golden halos, made from gold beads strung on wire. To disguise where the wire attaches to their heads, I added a lot of curly hair, blonde for one angel and red for the other. Although you can buy curly fiber, I prefer to make it myself. Naturally curly roving can’t be cleaned as thoroughly as straight roving (or the curls won’t be pretty anymore) so it often has bits of plant matter left in it. Even though it probably takes the same amount of time to pick out little twigs and whatnot as it does to curl each strand by hand, I curl my own. I make my curls by steam-ironing tiny bunches of roving around wooden toothpicks or skewers, depending on the size of the curls.

The kings and camels are always my favorite part of the Nativity Scene because they are always so fancy and embellished. Because I like them so much, I decided to make a matching camel for each of my kings. I wanted them all to be unique, so I chose a different color scheme for each pair:

Blue and Bronze:

Green and Yellow:

and Red and White:

This is the first time I ever combined felting and beading and I was really happy with how they turned out. I think that the shininess of the beads makes the camels look extra fancy and decorated. I also put bells on them, so they jingle nicely when you pick them up.